A framed prayer dominates the living room wall in the apartment of one of St. Paul’s most-reviled criminals.

It is the Lord’s Prayer, the one that starts with “Our Father, who art in heaven …”

To its right and left are framed photos of 30-year-old Willie Hart’s two children, a boy and girl, ages 2 and 3. There’s also a family portrait that includes their smiling young mother. A Bible, the one Hart’s mother sent when he was in prison, lies on a shelf a few feet away.

It’s a serene display, the kind you find in many homes. It clashes sharply with the dark conversation taking place a few feet away.

“I was going to kill him then and there, right in my mother’s house,” Hart says, referring to Andre Coppage, then a fellow 6-0 Tre gang member and suspected police snitch. The St. Paul-based gang was also known as the Six Mobster Gang or “SMG.”

“I had a gun in his mouth, and Buster (reputed gang leader Robert George Jefferson, Hart’s cousin) stopped me,” Hart adds during the first public interview he has ever granted.

Hart was only 13 then, but as hard core and dangerous as any Twin Cities street gang member in the 1990s, he says.

Then came Feb. 28, 1994, about a week after Hart’s assault on Coppage, who was then 15 and is now 32.

That night, assailants torched the St. Paul triplex on Lawson Avenue where Coppage lived. Coppage escaped the inferno. But his five younger brothers and sisters, ages 2 to 11, perished in the blaze.

Hart and Jefferson’s half brother, Robert James “Duddy” Jefferson, were eventually fingered by police and informants as the gang members ordered by Buster Jefferson to torch the home. Motive? They knew Coppage had provided police with information about a gang-related slaying two weeks earlier.

The Coppage children’s deaths outraged and stunned St. Paul as the Twin Cities struggled to combat unprecedented gang violence.

The incident propelled law enforcement to find the culprits and dismantle what U.S. District Judge Michael Davis later called “the most violent group of people that this state has ever seen.”

Sixteen years later, Hart — who pleaded guilty and spent 10 years in detention before his release four years ago — would not argue much with Davis’ assessment.

“We were not saints. I hurt people, I shot people … we sold dope,” he said. But he’s adamant that he was not involved in the Coppage deaths.

“I could never live with killing five kids,” he said. “I never had anything to do with it. If I had known who did it in my organization, I would have done something to him.”

However, the federal prosecutor in the case and Andre Coppage beg to differ.

“Absolutely. There’s no doubt in my mind,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeff Paulsen said of Hart’s involvement and complicity in what the prosecutor described at trial as a “slaughter of the innocents.”

“That (expletive) is guilty,” said Coppage, who confronted Hart two months ago when the two met by chance at a Twin Cities rap concert. They almost came to blows.

Hart said he’s not surprised at the responses, which is partly why he’s writing a book to set the record straight and clear his name.

“I have nephews and nieces and others, and I want them to know the truth,” he said. “St. Paul is small, so there are many people out there who still say, ‘There goes that baby killer. He killed five kids.’ ”

THE GANG LIFE

Hart scoffs at rumors that he firebombed the home to be initiated into the gang. He said he was weaned into the gang culture.

“I knew nothing else,” he said. “It was a family thing.”

Hart said he used to walk around Washington Junior High School with at least $1,000 in his pockets. His juvenile probation officer once caught him with $1,300 during a surprise visit to his school. He also owned three cars — including the 1986 white Camaro that authorities seized after the firebombing, when it still smelled of gasoline vapors, they said.

“We were probably the smallest but also the biggest (moneymakers) out there,” Hart said of the gang. “We were a million-dollar enterprise.”

The beginning of the end for the gang was the Feb. 12, 1994, fatal shooting of Londwea Brown by Wilson “Ty” Hill, a gang member and Andre Coppage’s best friend. Coppage witnessed the shooting. Although he has repeatedly denied it, gang members suspected — and a police report indicated — that Coppage did provide authorities with information about the slaying.

Four days later, Hart and other gang members assaulted Coppage in the Frogtown home of Hart’s mother. The firebombing took place 12 days later.

After the fire, Coppage told police about the assault.

Police rounded up six suspects, including Hart. They also questioned Hart about the firebombing.

“I told them that I did not know anything about that,” he said. “I did not know what a Molotov cocktail was. I was a shooter. I would have gone over there and shot him. We were in it at the time with the Hilltop Hustlers (another rival St. Paul gang). You ever heard of us firebombing them?”

Hart was found guilty of the assault in juvenile court and spent eight months incarcerated at a South Dakota institution.

THE INVESTIGATION

St. Paul police — stymied by lack of cooperation — posted a reward in the firebombing case and continued to investigate. They and federal investigators formed a task force to find the perpetrators.

Meanwhile, the mostly teenage gang was not exactly hiding or taking a respite from its violent ways.

Hart shot Damon Brown, a fellow gang member and childhood friend, three times during a dispute. A few months later, Buster Jefferson, whom Hart considered “like a big brother,” shot Hart five times for shooting Brown.

The following may sound incomprehensible, almost insane, to most of us. But this is unquestionably rational in the criminal underworld.

“I shot Damon. I grew up with him, but he never said I did it,” Hart said. “Buster shot me. I know why, but I never said it was him.”

Investigators finally secured a parade of informants, a federal grand jury indictment and some evidence, including a video purportedly showing Hart and Duddy Jefferson inside a gas station 10 minutes after the firebombing and just a few blocks from the scene.

On Oct. 14, 1997, Hart, the Jeffersons and 18 others were rounded up and arrested in connection with the gang’s criminal activities.

The bunch underwent prosecution on federal charges of drug trafficking conspiracy, continuing criminal enterprise and racketeering. Quite a few rolled over and linked Hart and the Jeffersons to the firebombing in exchange for reduced sentences.

The trial lasted six weeks. Jury deliberations lasted nearly five days, with jurors mostly stuck on the lack of physical evidence connecting the defendants to the firebombing.

Some of the most disturbing testimony the jury heard came from a St. Paul Fire Department investigator who found the bodies of the Coppage children.

A DENIAL

Hart could not be tried as an adult in the firebombing, according to federal statutes at the time. He was charged with five counts of juvenile murder. He was also facing 60 months as a juvenile on felony drug charges. Paulsen did go after Hart as an adult in the shooting of Damon Brown because he was 15 at the time.

Hart said his non-jury and juvenile court trial before Judge Davis took place after the Jeffersons were convicted in the firebombing and sentenced to life without parole.

He said federal prosecutors offered him a deal before the Jeffersons’ convictions if he would testify against them. In return, he would be absolved.

Hart refused, he told me, because of “mob ethics.” That included — get this — ratting on the very same “big brother” mentor who almost shot him to death.

“So you weren’t going to roll over on your cousin?” I asked.

“No. I’d rather kill him than roll over on him. I don’t know that Buster did that. Buster never told me that he did that.”

“He never ordered you and Duddy to do it?” I asked again.

“No. Never.”

Hart said he was told the feds planned to kick the Brown shooting down to the state level, where he would be charged with attempted murder as an adult and probably face 27 years.

He said he was told he would serve no more than 10 years, some of it in juvenile facilities, if he copped a guilty plea to the firebombing deaths and accepted the convictions on the Brown shooting and the existing drug charges.

He was not going to give up Buster. But 10 was better than 27. He said he wrote a letter to Davis, informing him that he and others were being set up by informants out to get either reward money or reduced prison terms. But he never heard back. It was the same theory defense attorneys brought forth without success.

So, he said, he reluctantly took the deal. He did time in a North Dakota juvenile facility until he turned 21. Then he was transferred to federal adult facilities. He walked out in 2006.

He’s unemployed and baby-sits his kids while their mother works. He said he obtained his GED behind bars and pursued college computer courses at Minneapolis Technical Community College until his kids were born. An aspiring rapper, he spends his days penning tunes as well as the book he wants to publish.

Coppage, who wrote his own book, “Code of Silence,” nearly a decade ago and is currently seeking screenplay rights, is not swayed by what Hart says now.

“I’m convinced by the police and the people at trial that he was involved,” he said. “I can’t believe this guy has his (expletive) freedom and is walking around and my (siblings) are buried in holes.”

Hart said he understands Coppage’s hatred of him.

“Maybe one day we can sit down and talk freely about this,” he said. “But the (police) detectives played dirty. They could not care less who did it. They just cared that they got a conviction.”

I ask him before I leave whether he has a working title for his book.

“32 Below to the Touch,” he tells me.“I’m labeled as a cold-hearted killer in St. Paul, Minnesota, and my nickname is Chill. It’s a cold story — those deaths. But I’m not saying cold like cold-hearted here. We were scapegoats. …”

I look at the framed prayer on the wall before I leave. I hope there is indeed a final judge who knows the absolute truth to this case, one that continues to sting so many after so many years.

From smoking crack in a Harlem drug den for a front-page exposé to covering the deaths of 86 people in a Bronx social club fire, Rubén Rosario spent 11 years as a writer for the New York Daily News before joining the Pioneer Press in 1991 as special correspondent and city editor. He launched his award-winning column in 1997. He is by far the loudest writer in the newsroom over the phone.

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